The Voice of the City: Further Stories of the Four Million eBook

On the morrow, I dragged him to an editor. The
great man read, and, rising, gave Pettit his hand.
That was a decoration, a wreath of bay, and a guarantee
of rent.

And then old Pettit smiled slowly. I call him
Gentleman Pettit now to myself. It’s a
miserable name to give a man, but it sounds better
than it looks in print.

“I see,” said old Pettit, as he took up
his story and began tearing it into small strips.
“I see the game now. You can’t write
with ink, and you can’t write with your own
heart’s blood, but you can write with the heart’s
blood of some one else. You have to be a cad before
you can be an artist. Well, I am for old Alabam
and the Major’s store. Have you got a light,
Old Hoss?”

I went with Pettit to the depot and died hard.

“Shakespeare’s sonnets?” I blurted,
making a last stand. “How about him?”

“A cad,” said Pettit. “They
give it to you, and you sell it—­love, you
know. I’d rather sell ploughs for father.”

“But,” I protested, “you are reversing
the decision of the world’s greatest—­”

“Good-by, Old Hoss,” said Pettit.

“Critics,” I continued. “But—­say—­if
the Major can use a fairly good salesman and book-keeper
down there in the store, let me know, will you?”

XIII

NEMESIS AND THE CANDY MAN

“We sail at eight in the morning on the Celtic,”
said Honoria, plucking a loose thread from her lace
sleeve.

“I heard so,” said young Ives, dropping
his hat, and muffing it as he tried to catch it, “and
I came around to wish you a pleasant voyage.”

“Of course you heard it,” said Honoria,
coldly sweet, “since we have had no opportunity
of informing you ourselves.”

Ives looked at her pleadingly, but with little hope.

Outside in the street a high-pitched voice chanted,
not unmusically, a commercial gamut of “Cand-ee-ee-ee-s!
Nice, fresh cand-ee-ee-ee-ees!”

“It’s our old candy man,” said Honoria,
leaning out the window and beckoning. “I
want some of his motto kisses. There’s nothing
in the Broadway shops half so good.”

The candy man stopped his pushcart in front of the
old Madison Avenue home. He had a holiday and
festival air unusual to street peddlers. His
tie was new and bright red, and a horseshoe pin, almost
life-size, glittered speciously from its folds.
His brown, thin face was crinkled into a semi-foolish
smile. Striped cuffs with dog-head buttons covered
the tan on his wrists.

“I do believe he’s going to get married,”
said Honoria, pityingly. “I never saw him
taken that way before. And to-day is the first
time in months that he has cried his wares, I am sure.”

Ives threw a coin to the sidewalk. The candy
man knows his customers. He filled a paper bag,
climbed the old-fashioned stoop and handed it in.
“I remember—­” said Ives.